Indian Horticulture Journal

The experiment was conducted to study the correlation and path analysis for yield and its attributing traits in pumpkin genotypes at the Department of Horticulture, University Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru. The results revealed that the yield characters like fruit weight and rind thickness showed positive and highly significant association with yield. A negative relationship has been observed between yield and number of days to first female flowering. The association of number of fruits per vine with fruit weight was negative and significant. This makes a clear indication that increase in number of fruits per vine would indirectly affect the total yield which is more dependent on fruit weight. The characters like vine length, number of branches, days to first female flowering, days to first harvest, number of fruits per plant, weight of fruit and TSS were most important characters which had positive and direct effect on yield, which could be used for selection criteria for effective improvement in fruit yield. But, the direct effects of number of leaves, days to first male flower flowering, sex ratio, days to 50 per cent female flowering and fruit set per cent were negative in their association with fruit yield.